He chaired the Computer Science Department at Rice University from January 1994 until June 2002. Prior to joining Rice in 1993, he was at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where he managed the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department. Dr Vardi received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981.

Vardi is the recipient of three IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards, a co-winner of the 2000 Gödel Prize, a co-winner of the 2005 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, and a co-winner of the LICS 2006 Test-of-Time Award. He holds honorary doctorates from Saarland University, Germany, and the University of Orleans, France. Dr Vardi is an editor of several international journals and the president of the International Federation of Computational Logicians. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He was designated Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information, and was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the European Academy of Sciences, and the Academia Europea. He has also co-chaired the ACM Task Force on Job Migration.